Amanda Gomez, MSPH PhD Student, Maternal and Child Health
Gomez, an MSPH to PhD student, worked on improving rural maternity care at UNC Family Medicine at Chatham Hospital with the support of the Siegel Student Support Award.
Amanda Gomez is a second-year MSPH to PhD student in maternal and child health. She did her summer practicum at UNC Family Medicine at Chatham Hospital, where she helped the hospital plan for establishing an evidence-based maternity care unit to serve rural and low-resource patients. Although her practicum has ended, Amanda continues to work with UNC Family Medicine on this project. Construction on the facility will begin in January and its doors are scheduled to open in the fall of 2020.
Why did you choose to work with Chatham Hospital?
I have always felt strongly about giving back to the community that has been my home in my academic and professional career, so I really wanted to do a local practicum that feeds back into this part of North Carolina. I also have a spot in my heart for rural communities. After college, I was a nonprofit domestic violence counselor covering three rural counties along the U.S.-Mexico border. It helped me realize how rural areas are so often forgotten. Getting in on this project early to help influence the decision-making process was also very attractive.
What kind of projects did you do to help support those decisions?
I did a comprehensive literature review of maternity care in the United States and Canada, which both have issues with rural maternity care and closures of rural hospitals and birth facilities. Since decisions were still being made about goals and staffing models, I thought that if we could anticipate what challenges might occur, we could get ahead of them and make informed decisions or have contingency plans. My biggest takeaway was that the workforce makes or breaks women’s experiences in these facilities. Family physicians and nurses in rural hospitals are overworked. They are understaffed and are rarely off call, and they can’t pursue continuing education. There is lot of burnout and feelings of being pulled in different directions.
I proposed baseline employee interviews about anticipated challenges and strengths, how they would feel best supported in this work environment, what their continuing education needs are, and so on. The interviews could help us develop an employee wellness and education training plan. The idea is that having a healthy, competent, trained and educated workforce would help with employee retention and also, hopefully, have trickle-down effects that are good for patients and outcomes.
To evaluate the services once they’re available, I made a “wish list” of maternal and child health indicators so we can see if the new facility moves the needle on any of these measures.
What did it mean to be the recipient of the Siegel Student Support Award?
It made a huge difference. This project was not a paid role and I needed to have some source of income over the summer, but I was really dedicated to and attracted to this project. I was very fortunate to be selected and so grateful for the opportunity.
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